Andy Burnham’s love of Tony Harrison’s poetry is more than a politician’s reading list. It points to something important about language, class and leadership. As a working-class sixth former, Burnham encountered Harrison’s v. and found a voice that was regional, ambitious, angry, intellectual and rooted in family and place. That discovery changed what he thought was possible. It raised a vital question: whose language is heard as authoritative, and whose is too readily dismissed? In my new post, I explore what leaders can learn from Harrison’s difficult, powerful poetry: that language is part of power; that real leadership does not smooth over conflict or deny anger; and that grief, acknowledged with care, can make public language more emotionally accurate. Poetry does not make anyone automatically wise or humane. But it can cultivate attention, imagination and the ability to hear what lies beneath the polished language of meetings, strategy and public life. Literary leadership is not about displaying cultural capital or quoting a poem in a speech. It is about becoming less glib about other people’s lives—and more responsible for the worlds we help create.

I was very sad to hear of the death of William — or Will — Sutherland, who died this month after a long illness. William was my former uncle, but that slightly formal description does not capture his place in our family. He was a gardener, writer, musician, teacher, environmental campaigner and a profoundly practical man: someone who believed that land should be tended, food grown, skills shared, music played and good questions asked. For many years he ran the walled garden at Christon Bank in Northumberland, growing extraordinary vegetables and fruit, and running hugely popular scything and self-sufficiency courses. In later life he returned to the cello, playing with his partner Roz in pubs and at gatherings with friends and family. He could be intense, argumentative and surprising — but he was always engaged with life, other people and the state of the world. As an adult, I came to value a quality in him that is rarer than it should be: he asked what you thought, listened to the answer, and took your interests seriously. I have written a longer tribute, “Ten things I learnt from William Sutherland”, about his love of the land, his belief in learning by doing, the importance of returning to what we once loved, and the need to leave something living behind us. Rest in peace, William. #InMemoriam #CreativeLiving #Northumberland #Gardening #SelfSufficiency #Music #ClimateChange

I travelled in my small car — a Toyota iQ I call ‘Brains’, after the bespectacled Thunderbirds character — to a writer’s cabin in Wales partly because I wanted to write, and partly because it gave me an excuse to visit my friend Julia Forster, the novelist and writing coach who runs it with her husband. They have built the cabin at the far end of their property with a rare understanding of what a writer needs: privacy, quiet, warmth and the reassuring sense of being properly looked after while being left alone. It sits apart from the main house, with the valley and weather beyond its windows, offering the kind of solitude in which you can work for hours, or stare into space without feeling that you ought to be doing anything more useful. I went with a manuscript, books, running clothes and more than a little unfinished business from ordinary life. I came away having learnt five things: that writing often continues when we stop forcing it; that reading other writers changes the way we attend to people and the world; that walking restores proportion; that rhythm matters more than rigid discipline; and that solitude is most valuable when it enables us to return more fully to other people.

When something goes wrong at work, the instinct can be to find the person responsible. Yet blame often makes organisations less intelligent: people protect themselves, uncertainty goes unspoken, and vital information stops travelling. Accountability matters. But it works best when people feel safe enough to tell the truth about what has happened. Research on psychological safety suggests that speaking up, asking for help and acknowledging mistakes are essential to learning. Recent evidence also suggests that safety is most powerful when it is paired with a shared commitment to solve problems together. So, in difficult meetings, perhaps we can pause before asking, “Whose fault is this?” and ask instead: “What has happened?” “What are we missing?” “What does this situation require of us now?” This does not mean avoiding responsibility or pretending mistakes do not matter. It means separating inquiry from prosecution, so that problems become material for collective action. Creative leaders can treat policies, projects and processes as drafts: serious enough to implement properly, but always open to evidence, revision and repair. My new article explores how we can create a pathway out of blame, and towards curiosity, candour and practical change.

I’ve been thinking about what creative writing might have to teach us about leadership. When something goes wrong at work, we tend to construct a story very quickly: someone is being difficult, they haven’t done their job properly, they don’t understand, they aren’t listening. Sometimes that story may be right, but it is still a story told from where we happen to be standing. Creative writers are used to doing something different: leaving their own position for a while and trying to imagine the world from somebody else’s. In this new piece, I explore whether that simple practice might help leaders too. What happens if, before a difficult meeting or an angry reply, we spend five minutes writing the other person’s version of events? It doesn’t mean abandoning judgement or accountability. It means making our judgement a little more complicated, curious and humane. Perhaps good leadership sometimes begins by recognising that the story in our own head isn’t necessarily the only story in the room.

I spent a day recently at Tate Modern with Frida Kahlo, Tracey Emin and Ana Mendieta, or at least that was how it began to feel. Kahlo made me think about the different selves we carry around with us, and the stories we tell about who we are. Emin made me look again at the ordinary, messy materials of a life — beds, bodies, love, illness, memory — and how these can become the stuff of art. But it was Ana Mendieta who stayed with me most. Her work seemed to lead me away from the self altogether, towards earth, leaves, trees, water, fire and the strange comfort of remembering that we are part of something much larger than ourselves. I went to Tate Modern to look at art and came away thinking about how to live. I've written about five things these three extraordinary artists taught me about creative living, and why creativity might sometimes be less about making more things than seeing more deeply what is already here. Find the blog here,

Research is frightening because, if it’s genuinely research, you don’t already know the answer. Co-leading Creative Writing Together, our £1m+ AHRC-funded research project, is already teaching me a great deal — not only about research and creative writing, but about leadership. I’ve written about four lessons I’m beginning to learn: 1. Make it safe not to know. Psychological safety isn’t the opposite of rigour. I’m increasingly convinced it’s one of the conditions of rigour. 2. Choose people who know things you don’t. Good leadership isn’t about being the cleverest person in the room. It’s about bringing different kinds of expertise into genuine conversation. 3. Create enough structure for discovery. We need plans, ethics, milestones and accountability — but also enough freedom for research to surprise us. 4. Don’t be frightened of disagreement. Challenge isn’t necessarily obstruction. Sometimes disagreement contains exactly the information a project needs. I’ve been learning these things from a wonderful interdisciplinary team as we develop creative-writing workshops bringing together children, parents, teachers and communities. We’re still near the beginning, which is rather the point. If we already knew exactly what we were going to discover, there wouldn’t be much point in doing the research. Perhaps creative writing, research and creative leadership have this in common: you create the conditions, begin the journey, and leave enough space to be surprised by where you arrive. New piece on my website: #CreativeLeadership #CreativeWritingTogether #PsychologicalSafety #Leadership #Research #CreativeWriting #Education #ActionResearch #HigherEducation #Collaboration

What can creative writing teach us about leadership? Quite a lot, I think. I’ve spent many years teaching and researching creative writing, and more recently leading people, projects and teams. Increasingly, I’ve noticed that some of the principles that make a creative writing workshop flourish also make for better leadership. I’ve brought four of them together in this new piece: 1. Create the conditions — don’t try to control the outcome. 2. Make it safe for people to be wrong. 3. Listen like a writer. 4. Learn to redraft. For me, the interesting shift is from thinking of a leader as the person who has the best ideas to thinking of leadership as creating the conditions in which other people can have good ideas, speak honestly, take intelligent risks and flourish. Creative writing has taught me a surprising amount about how we might do that. I’ve included some practical ideas that leaders can try, alongside research on creativity, psychological safety and organisational learning. I’d be particularly interested to hear from people working in schools, universities, charities and other organisations: what helps people feel able to think creatively where you work? Four Things Creative Writing Has Taught Me About Great Leadership:

What can a broken glass table, a dismantled piano and Philip Glass's music teach us about creativity? In this reflection on Tao of Glass, Phelim McDermott's remarkable new theatrical memoir, I explore seven lessons I took away from an evening that was as much about memory as music. McDermott's blend of storytelling, philosophy, puppetry and Glass's compositions prompted me to reflect on my own lifelong relationship with the composer's work, from discovering Koyaanisqatsi and Glassworks as a student to cycling through London's extraordinary summer of 2026 with Glass's music in my ears. Along the way, I consider unfinished artistic projects, Japanese kintsugi, the power of theatre to transform everyday objects, and why certain works of art continue to change their meaning throughout our lives.

I've just published a new blog reflecting on a stimulating day at the Creative Writing and Mental Health conference at the University of Warwick. It turned into something more personal than I'd expected. Returning to Warwick brought back vivid memories of my PGCE year in 1990, when I cycled each day from Coventry to my teaching placements. Those journeys, and the classrooms I arrived in, were where I really learnt how to teach. Thirty-six years later, I returned to present research from our AHRC-funded Creative Writing Together project, exploring how creative writing can strengthen wellbeing, reflective thinking and relationships within schools and communities. The conference brought together an inspiring mix of novelists, poets, psychologists, therapists and educators. What struck me most was the shared belief that creative writing is about far more than self-expression. At its best, it helps us inhabit other perspectives, develop empathy, shape difficult experiences into meaningful narratives and deepen our understanding of ourselves and others. The day also prompted me to think more critically about the relationship between literary craft and wellbeing, and about the ethical responsibilities involved when creative writing engages with trauma. In the blog, I reflect on seven ideas I took away from the conference, drawing on presentations by Nathan Filer, Mark Pearson, Yang Hao and others, alongside my own work on creative writing pedagogy. I hope it will be of interest to teachers, writers, therapists, researchers and anyone curious about how storytelling can enrich both education and our understanding of what it means to be human. I'd love to know what you think.

In this episode of the Mindful Learning Podcast, I speak with English teacher and researcher Sabina Miah about GCSE English, oracy, creativity, workload, and what is happening inside English classrooms today. Sabina trained on the PGCE English programme at Goldsmiths and is now researching the impact of GCSE English Language reforms on teachers’ pedagogy and classroom practice. Together we explore the disappearance of coursework, the marginalisation of spoken language, the rise of “technique spotting”, silent classrooms, teacher exhaustion, and what all this means for young people. Sabina speaks candidly about the pressures facing teachers today, describing how she developed a “teacher autopilot” simply to survive the workload, while still finding meaning in “those little interactions with the students”. We discuss whether English teaching has become too formulaic, why oracy matters for democracy and social mobility, and how many classrooms have become increasingly compliance-driven. At the same time, the conversation is hopeful. We explore how English could once again become a creative, dialogic subject rooted in debate, drama, discussion, empathy, media literacy, and genuine human expression. This podcast will resonate with teachers, parents, policymakers, students, and anyone interested in the future of education.

Goldsmiths is recruiting an Interim Head of Initial Teacher Education. This is an exciting opportunity to join one of the UK's most creative and research-rich teacher education communities, helping lead our highly regarded PGCE programmes and shape the next generation of teachers. The advert for the role is here,

Recently I spent over a week visiting universities in southeastern China, travelling through Fuzhou and Xiamen promoting Goldsmiths and exploring new educational partnerships. What I encountered challenged many of my assumptions about contemporary China. This was a country that felt simultaneously ancient and futuristic: bullet trains travelling at over 250 kilometres per hour, QR codes governing everyday life, giant digital infrastructures, but also temples filled with incense, banyan shaded parks, Confucian traditions of hospitality and colonial era streets overlooking the Taiwan Strait. I reflect on the extraordinary communal culture around food, the sheer scale of Chinese universities, the rise of China’s own postgraduate sector, and the way figures such as Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Nixon and Kissinger still haunt the political and historical imagination in very different ways from the West. I also explore how China’s technological self sufficiency, from WeChat to digital payments, creates a society that is both incredibly efficient and deeply distinctive from Europe or America. Along the way, I found myself thinking about great travel writers such as Colin Thubron and Peter Hessler, and how travel changes not just our understanding of another country, but of our own.

This blog explores why Suzie Miller’s Inter Alia feels like such an important play for our moment. Ostensibly a legal drama about a judge whose son is accused of rape, the play becomes a powerful meditation on middle class family life, emotional labour, modern masculinity and the hidden pressures faced by professional women. Drawing on Rosamund Pike’s extraordinary performance as Judge Jessica Parks, the blog reflects on the contradictions at the heart of contemporary liberal family life. Jessica is professionally authoritative, intellectually formidable and morally serious, yet privately overwhelmed by the demands of motherhood, marriage and emotional responsibility. The blog examines how the play exposes the unequal burdens still placed upon women, even within supposedly progressive households. It also considers the play’s exploration of boys, pornography, internet culture and the rise of the manosphere, asking how young men are shaped by online misogyny when fathers remain emotionally distant and mothers are stretched to breaking point. The gradual disintegration of the family home on stage becomes a metaphor for the emotional fragility beneath polished middle class success. Combining personal reflection, cultural criticism and close attention to the production’s staging and themes, the blog argues that Inter Alia is not simply about rape culture or the legal system. It is about exhaustion, guilt, intimacy and the emotional cost of trying to “have it all” in contemporary Britain. The piece will particularly resonate with parents, teachers, therapists, academics and anyone interested in feminism, theatre and modern relationships.

Step into Wonderland with a fresh, interactive approach to Lewis Carroll’s classic novels. Lewis Carroll’s Alice Novels: The Study Guide Edition combines the complete texts of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass with commentary, creative activities, teaching ideas and discussion questions designed to deepen readers’ understanding and enjoyment. Rather than simply summarising the stories, the book explores themes such as identity, dreams, nonsense, childhood, power and imagination, encouraging readers to think critically and creatively about Carroll’s strange and enduring worlds. Ideal for students, teachers, trainee teachers and lovers of children’s literature.

Goldsmiths, University of London is currently advertising for a new Head of Initial Teacher Education, and I genuinely believe it is one of the most exciting leadership opportunities in teacher education at the moment. Goldsmiths has played a major role in educating the nation’s teachers since the early 1900s and has built a longstanding reputation for excellence, creativity and innovation in teacher education. Our PGCE programmes are distinctive because they combine rigorous academic study with reflective, inclusive and imaginative approaches to teaching and learning. In this blog, I outline five reasons why this role offers such a special opportunity. These include the chance to work within a university known internationally for creativity and critical thinking; to lead a rich portfolio of Primary and Secondary PGCE programmes; to collaborate with outstanding colleagues and highly motivated students; to shape the future direction of Initial Teacher Education during a period of national change; and to do so within a permanent part-time role that allows space for research, writing and wider professional practice. Goldsmiths offers PGCE programmes across subjects including English, Drama, Mathematics, Media, Science, Art and Design, Modern Languages and Primary Education, all underpinned by a strong commitment to social justice, creativity and educational excellence. The closing date is 28th May 2026, so do apply soon if you are interested in joining a vibrant and forward-looking educational community.

Really excited to share my latest blog about the launch of the AHRC-funded Creative Writing Together project at York St John University. Last week, in early May 2026, our brilliant interdisciplinary team gathered for the first major kickoff meeting, bringing together creative writers, educators, psychologists, researchers and digital innovators to explore how creative writing can support reflective functioning, empathy, wellbeing and social change. In the blog, I reflect on seven key things I learned from our first week together, including why creative writing projects are built through relationships, how writing from another perspective can transform empathy, the continuing power of free writing, why ethical AI needs principles rather than panic, and how strong structures make creative freedom possible. It was genuinely inspiring to work alongside colleagues including Tom Dobson, Samia Rahman, Dan Ingram-Brown, Paige Davis, Sam Clarke, Jane Collins, Rachel Seiffert and many others as we begin what feels like a deeply important and hopeful project. Creative writing is not ornamental. It helps people connect, reflect and imagine differently. Read the full blog here: If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article.

I’ve just finished reading The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, and it’s stayed with me in a way very few novels do. What begins almost like a Jane Austen comedy of manners, a letter between families trying to arrange a match, becomes something far more expansive and unsettling. This is a novel about love, yes, but also about class, migration, identity, and the strange loneliness of living between worlds. Sunny, trapped between Indian privilege and American aspiration, is brilliantly drawn. Sonia, a gifted writer hemmed in by expectation, is just as compelling. But what really surprised me was Babita, Sunny’s monstrous, snobbish, controlling mother, who somehow becomes one of the most sympathetic figures in the book. Desai achieves something remarkable there. The novel moves across Delhi, Goa, New York and beyond, but never feels showy. It feels lived. There is humour, darkness, exploitation, tenderness, and a real sense of how people get trapped in the lives they inherit. For all its sophistication, it’s also deeply readable. There’s a real “will they, won’t they” energy running through it, even as it tackles much bigger questions. One of the most accomplished novels I’ve read in years.

I met Tobias Hill in 1999, in a London literary world that felt alive, exploratory, not yet fully digitised. Very different from now in 2026. We stood outside a sealed Underground entrance in Kentish Town, a space that had quietly taken on another life, hidden, ambiguous, charged. Tobias was drawn to it, not for spectacle, but because he was always interested in what lay beneath. That sense of him has stayed with me. In this blog, I reflect on five things his writing taught me, about mystery, the underground, humanity, metaphor, and the unconscious. Hill’s work moves through cities, objects, and histories with extraordinary precision, always searching for meaning within the specific. I’ve also included a digitally generated image of Tobias, a symbolic portrait rather than a literal one. I suspect, slightly ironically, that the Tobias I knew would have found it amusing. He wasn’t po-faced about art or writing, quite the opposite, he was playful, curious, alive to odd juxtapositions. I think he would have laughed, at least a bit. I offer it in that same spirit of playfulness he brought to his work, while also trying to gesture towards something else he captured so well, the uncanny sense that the familiar world is always on the edge of becoming strange. For me, the image became a way of thinking about Tobias as a kind of time traveller, still moving through the underground spaces he wrote about, still connecting with us through his work. He touched many lives, and continues to do so. I really miss him, even though I did not know him that well; I miss his literary presence in particular. This piece is an attempt to honour his humanity and work. Read the full blog here:

I’m delighted to be recruiting for two roles on our AHRC funded Creative Writing Together project at Goldsmiths, University of London. The project explores how creative writing can support reflection, wellbeing, and dialogue across generations, working with schools, community groups, and writers across London. We are looking for a Research Assistant (.5 FTE) and a Short Courses and Training Officer (.2 FTE) to join the team from 1 May 2026 to 30 April 2029. Full details, including the job descriptions, are now available on my blog. If you are interested, please send a formal letter of application and CV to me, Dr Francis Gilbert at f.gilbert@gold.ac.uk by Thursday 25 March at 4pm. Interviews will take place 31 March, either online or in person at Goldsmiths, and please state your availability for interview in your application. A formal advert will appear on the Goldsmiths website shortly, but I am sharing details early in case colleagues, doctoral researchers, teachers, writers, or community practitioners may be interested. Do take a look at the blog post and feel free to share it with anyone who might be a good fit.

As part of the British Library's Learning Skills Research Network, Debbie Bogard and I co-led an online Learning and Skills Research Network session exploring research methods and data collection in Further Education. At first I joked that research methods might not be the most thrilling topic. Yet the discussion quickly showed the opposite. When research begins with real classrooms, real teachers, and real learners, it becomes deeply engaging. The session centred on a simple but powerful idea. Small scale practitioner research can generate profound insight. FE classrooms are rich research sites where teachers already observe patterns, dilemmas, and possibilities every day. Research is not something distant or purely academic. It begins with curiosity about practice. Five themes emerged strongly. First, FE classrooms contain valuable knowledge worth studying. Second, the research question matters more than the method. Third, teacher voice is not decoration but a form of data that reveals how systems actually operate. Fourth, ethics sit at the centre of practitioner research because education is fundamentally relational. Finally, research can be empowering. In systems shaped by accountability pressures, inquiry allows teachers to step back, reflect, and understand their work more deeply. The workshop reminded us that practitioner research is not about grand projects. It is about paying attention to practice and learning from it together.

I am delighted to share that Professor Tom Dobson and I, working with an exceptional interdisciplinary team, have secured close to £1 million in funding for a three year research project, Creative Writing Together. This major award supports an ambitious investigation into how creative writing can strengthen relationships between children, parents, teachers and communities, and enhance wellbeing across educational settings. At a time when schools and families are facing rising mental health challenges, increasing absence and deepening inequalities, we are asking a simple but powerful question. What if creative writing were treated not as an optional enrichment activity, but as a relational practice that helps people understand themselves and one another more deeply? The project centres on the concept of reflective functioning, the capacity to make sense of behaviour in terms of thoughts, feelings and intentions. Strong reflective functioning is associated with secure attachment, improved relationships and emotional regulation. Yet creative writing has rarely been studied as a preventative, community based approach to developing these capacities. Over three years, we will run eight week programmes in schools and community centres in London and York, bringing families and teachers together to write collaboratively. Combining action research, psychological measures and close analysis of participants’ writing, we aim to generate robust evidence and practical resources that can inform policy and practice. Creative Writing Together positions writing as a shared, transformative act. In a fragmented educational landscape, it offers a hopeful vision of creativity as connection.

I recently watched Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, and I cannot stop thinking about it. It is a film that makes you laugh, then makes you question the laughter. In a cinema full of people, there were audible laughs during scenes of murder, not because they were comic in any simple way, but because they were staged with such grim, bureaucratic practicality. The premise is brutally simple. A laid-off paper expert decides to kill his rivals for a job so he can protect his family. What unfolds is not just a thriller, but a devastating portrait of masculinity under neoliberal pressure. When a man’s worth is fused with his wage, unemployment feels like erasure. Love becomes panic. Protection becomes predation. What shocked me most was not the violence, but how easily the system absorbs it. The film suggests that modern corporate life already trains us to think in terms of targets, elimination, competition, survival. If Oldboy was about imprisonment as destiny, No Other Choice is about employment as destiny. It is disturbing, funny, precise, and deeply humane. A film about men, family, and what happens when the system leaves you believing there is no other choice.

How can creative research help young people become agents of environmental change? This post highlights a chapter I co-authored with Anna Stewart in the edited collection Ecologies in Practice and Learning: Arts Interventions in the Earth Crisis. The book brings together arts educators, researchers and practitioners exploring how learning, creativity and ecological action intersect in a time of environmental crisis. Our chapter draws on the Parklife project, where young people aged eleven to fourteen became co-researchers into a local park. Using poetry, art, film, photography and surveys, they explored safety, ecology and belonging, and presented their findings directly to decision-makers. The result was real change on the ground. The chapter argues for creative, participatory research as a powerful tool for environmental education and democratic engagement, and for parks as classrooms without walls. You can read and download the full article via my website.

What happens when we stop seeing young people as a problem in parks, and instead invite them to become researchers, artists and agents of change? This blog, and the chapter it draws on, grows out of the Parklife project, a collaboration between university students, school pupils and local communities. It sets out five reasons why supporting young people to research their local parks matters now. Using creative and participatory methods such as poetry, visual art, film and surveys, the project showed what becomes possible when young people’s insights are taken seriously. Pupils aged eleven to fourteen became co-researchers rather than passive participants. They explored questions of safety, ecology, care and belonging, and presented their findings directly to councillors and park managers. The outcome was tangible change, including improved lighting, better litter management and new community facilities. The research also speaks to wider debates about education, environment and democracy. It challenges deficit narratives about youth, demonstrates the policy impact of creative research, and reimagines parks as classrooms without walls. The article is available open access via the Goldsmiths research repository and is published as a chapter in Ecologies in Practice and Learning: Arts Interventions in the Earth Crisis, situating Parklife within international conversations about socially engaged research and environmental futures. You can read the full copyright-free article here: Springer book: Goldsmiths repository:

St Mary’s Churchyard in Walthamstow is more than a restored historic site. It is a living commons, a place where gardening, conversation, memory, and creativity quietly intertwine. On a January afternoon, we gathered there with students from the MA Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths for a community writing session that showed just how powerful local, place-based creative work can be. Led by two MA students, Sophie and Priyanka, the session moved fluidly between sensory attention and playful experimentation. Smell, wind, weather, laughter, discomfort, poetry, and the natural world all became entry points into writing that felt inclusive, serious, and alive. Volunteers and students wrote side by side, discovering that creative confidence grows not through expertise but through permission, attention, and shared experience. What emerged was a practical, replicable model for community creative writing. One that does not demand performance, prizes curiosity over polish, and allows ecological awareness to arise through voice rather than instruction. This post reflects on six key practices from the session, offering ideas for anyone interested in engaging local communities through creative writing, mindfulness, and place.

Forgive the comic strip. It is there simply to convey the energy, playfulness and creative momentum of what was a genuinely joyful afternoon of creative writing at Goldsmiths. Recently we welcomed a brilliant group of Danish teenagers to campus for a creative writing workshop, led by their teacher Margit from DATE and NATE. They arrived full of curiosity, quickly made the space their own, and threw themselves into the session with enthusiasm, laughter and serious thought in equal measure. The workshop was led by three MA Creative Writing and Education students, Niki, Elizabeth and Priyanka, who guided the group through a series of carefully structured but low-stakes activities. From six-word stories and the joyful chaos of Consequences, to thinking about character through one vivid detail, conflict as the engine of story, and setting as atmosphere rather than description, the session offered a clear reminder of what works when teaching creative writing to teenagers. The comic strip gestures towards these ideas in a playful way, but what it really points to is something deeper. Teenagers being welcomed into a university. Future teachers developing their craft. And young writers discovering that language is something to explore and enjoy rather than fear. A brilliant snapshot of the MA Creative Writing and Education in action.

To Be Hamnet or Hamlet; that is the question Seven lessons I learnt from watching Hamnet NB: This review contains spoilers. What if Hamlet is not just a tragedy about revenge, but an unfinished conversation with grief? I watched Hamnet at my local cinema, Crouch End Picturehouse, and came away unsettled, moved, and intellectually provoked. I taught Hamlet for A level English for years and thought I knew the play inside out. This film quietly dismantled that confidence, not by claiming new facts, but by offering a bold emotional reading and asking the viewer to live inside it. The premise is historically sound. Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died aged eleven in 1596; Hamlet was written several years later. What the film explores is what can never be proven, how grief might echo, displace itself, and reappear through art. From Anne Hathaway’s embodied mourning, to forests that seem to think alongside human loss, to the suggestion that Hamlet functions as a kind of family therapy, this is a film that invites big questions. I ended up getting seriously drawn in, researching grief theory, psychoanalysis, family systems, authorship, and early modern ideas of selfhood. Freud sits alongside contemporary bereavement research; Shakespeare studies meet post Covid loss. You will not read a better informed blog on this film. This is a flawed, troubling, and genuinely thought provoking piece of cinema. Shakespeare specialists may wince; others may cry; some people walked out. I recommend it with curiosity rather than reverence. If you’re interested in how stories allow us to enter difficult emotional spaces without explaining them away, this one is for you. If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article.

I’m currently offering a small number of free Human Givens therapy sessions as part of the final stage of my professional training. This is a practical, solution focused approach that does not require you to talk about childhood trauma unless you want to. The work is often closer to coaching and focuses on challenges you are dealing with now, such as anxiety about work or money, relationships, confidence, or feeling stuck or overwhelmed. All sessions are confidential, ethical, time limited, and fully supervised by an accredited and registered Human Givens therapist. You can read more about my background, training, and approach, including an FAQ, here: If you are interested, please email me at sir@francisgilbert.co.uk . I will reply personally and in confidence.

Six things we can learn about home making from Sentimental Value What if home is not a place at all, but something we make moment by moment with other people? In Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, a Norwegian house becomes a vessel for memory, trauma, silence, and art. The film asks difficult questions about listening, inheritance, history, and how families survive when love is expressed imperfectly or too late. This piece reflects on six lessons about home making drawn from the film, from the way houses remember what people try to forget, to why care cannot be reduced to attentiveness alone, and how home may ultimately be created through reciprocal understanding rather than walls or ownership. The concept map above distils these ideas visually. Read the full blog here: www.francisgilbert.co.uk If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article.

What does it really mean to win? I went to see Marty Supreme expecting a sports movie, or at least a film about ambition. What I came away with was something darker and more unsettling. A portrait of winning at all costs, and the quiet wreckage left behind when success becomes the only value left standing. Ping pong is treated with utter seriousness in this film. No irony, no wink. It becomes a lens through which we watch a man climb, dominate, discard, and hollow himself out. Marty wins matches, lovers, money, status. He also abandons people, humiliates himself, and loses any capacity for kindness or care. The film’s greatest strength is its visual world. 1950s Manhattan, the shoe shop, the light, the textures, the labour. These spaces quietly tell a story Marty refuses to hear. Winning lifts him out of community and leaves him alone with his trophies. This blog reflects on five things the film taught me about winning, losing, seriousness, vulnerability, and why ambition without ethics ends up looking absurd rather than heroic. If you are interested in culture, education, masculinity, parenting, or what we teach children about success, this film, and this moment, are worth thinking about. Read the full piece on my website. If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article.

This new Analysis and Study Guide to A Christmas Carol is written to help GCSE students genuinely understand Dickens’ novella and write confident, high-level exam responses. It draws directly on my experience teaching A Christmas Carol for over twenty years in secondary classrooms, alongside my work as an academic at Goldsmiths where I research the best ways to teach diverse cohorts. Unlike formulaic revision guides, this book focuses on ideas, argument and clarity. It shows students how Dickens shapes meaning through structure, language, character and context, without reducing the novel to lists of quotes or rigid paragraph templates. Each section models the kind of thinking examiners reward, from building a clear thesis to selecting evidence that genuinely supports an argument. The guide includes detailed contextual explanations, accessible critical perspectives, close language analysis, character studies, theme exploration, exam style questions with guidance, creative tasks and speaking activities. The complete text of 'A Christmas Carol' is included, with clear, supportive annotations throughout. Written in an encouraging, student friendly voice, this guide works equally well for independent revision, classroom teaching and last minute consolidation. It is ideal for GCSE students aiming for top grades, and for teachers looking for a rigorous, readable resource grounded in real classroom practice.

It’s been a real privilege to contribute to Reading Children’s Fairytales: Inside the Gingerbread House (Routledge), a genuinely collaborative and intellectually generous volume edited by an outstanding team with strong roots in Goldsmiths, University of London. The book is edited by Dr Mette Lindahl-Wise and Dr Harry Oulton, both PhD graduates of Goldsmiths’ Education department, alongside Professor Vicky Macleroy, now Emerita Professor and still a hugely influential presence in the field, and Dr Emily Corbett, Head of the MA in Children’s Literature and a tireless champion of children’s and young adult literature. Their collective vision has shaped a book that is rigorous, creative, inclusive, and genuinely interdisciplinary. The volume brings together leading and emerging scholars, practitioners, and creative writers to explore the enduring power of Hansel and Gretel across children’s and young adult literature, art, and culture. It includes a chapter by Professor Michael Rosen and an introduction by Jack Zipes, widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on fairy tales, setting the intellectual tone for the collection. Across the book, contributors examine retellings of Hansel and Gretel in picturebooks, graphic novels, poetry, YA fiction, sculpture, and Hip-Hop, challenging narrow, hierarchical, and canonical approaches to fairy tales. The result is a rich, dialogic collection that celebrates multiple forms of knowledge, multimodal meaning-making, and culturally responsive approaches to children’s and young adult literature. If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article.

I’m pleased to share that I’ve contributed a chapter to The Oxford Handbook of Creativity and Education (Oxford University Press, 2025), a major international reference work bringing together leading research on creativity in education from across the world. The handbook explores how creativity is understood, supported, and constrained across educational systems, with chapters examining policy, assessment, curriculum, classroom practice, disciplines, and research methods. It is designed for students, researchers, teacher educators, school leaders, and policymakers interested in the future of creativity in learning, teaching, and leadership. My chapter, Using Creative Writing to Fuel Creativity, focuses on the role of creative writing as a core pedagogical practice rather than a marginal or optional one. Drawing on research and my own experience in schools and universities, I argue that creative writing can support creativity across many disciplines, not only English and the arts, but also science, social science, psychotherapy, and research practice. The chapter explores practices such as freewriting, flow-based writing, reflective writing, and my own concept of diagrarting, combining writing, drawing, and dialogue. It also engages critically with assessment, high-stakes accountability, decolonising pedagogy, and the limits of traditional creative writing workshop models. Central to the argument is the idea that how and why we teach creative writing shapes learners’ confidence, agency, and capacity for creative thought. The full chapter is published by Oxford University Press and is copyrighted. I’m able to share a PDF of the final draft (with one figure missing), which contains most of the argument and can be read alongside the published version in the handbook. If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article.

In December 2025, I delivered an online session for FE lecturers as part of the British Library Research Network, working with Debbie Bogard of the British Library. We explored seven things every teacher should know about research, using the original Alice in Wonderland manuscript as a metaphor for how inquiry really works. Research is never perfect or polished. It is exploratory, creative, full of revision and curiosity, just like a teacher’s everyday practice. We introduced practical ways to develop a research question, map its key ideas, choose an appropriate methodology, evaluate the credibility of data, and create a meaningful literature review. We also encouraged lecturers to think about more imaginative forms of sharing findings, including podcasts, infographics and multimodal projects. Examples from the Parklife project showed how creative participatory research can have a significant impact on communities and young people. The central message of the session was that research is an act of professional courage. It is not reserved for academics. With the support of the British Library Research Network, FE educators can shape their own inquiries, strengthen their critical thinking, and generate new knowledge that benefits learners and the wider sector.

The conclusion of the trial into the tragic death of Zhe Wang has brought renewed sadness to our community, but it also reminds us of the importance of remembering who she was beyond these events. Zhe was a gentle, attentive presence on the MA Creative Writing and Education, someone whose calmness and kindness shaped the spaces she entered. Her writing revealed a rare sensitivity to nature, stillness, and the quiet movements of thought, offering readers a way to slow down and reconnect with the world. Her classmates honoured her with great care, gathering her poems and prose into a beautifully produced anthology that reflects both her creativity and the affection she inspired. As we commemorate her, we hold close her humanity, her thoughtful way of being, and the luminosity of her work. Through her words and through our remembering, Zhe’s presence continues to shine.

In this Mindful Learning podcast, Francis Gilbert talks with MA Creative Writing and Education graduate Conor Patchell about his remarkable dissertation film on Irish identity abroad. Conor reflects on the stories he inherited from his grandfather about discrimination in England, the resilience of earlier generations, and the dramatic shift from suspicion to celebration that Irish people have experienced over seventy years. He explains how today’s warmth towards Irish culture rests on the labour, humour, and decency of migrants like Ann, Patsy, John, and Vincent, whose voices shape his film. Conor describes his own experience as “a popular immigrant” and speaks with gratitude about those who “paved the way for us”. This extract gives readers a glimpse into a deeply mindful exploration of migration, memory, and belonging. If you are reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article.

In this new episode of the Mindful Learning Podcast, I speak with Dr Sarah Pearce and Dr Anna Traianou about their powerful new report for the National Education Union, Are You on Slide 8 Yet?. The title comes from one teacher’s chilling experience: senior leaders checking through classroom doors to ensure every class was on the same PowerPoint slide. This report reveals how standardised curricula—ready-made lessons and scripts—are reshaping education across England, limiting both teacher autonomy and pupil creativity. As Dr Pearce explains, “If the children didn’t understand it, it almost didn’t matter. We had to keep going.” Teachers described feeling like “a warm body in front of the class,” stripped of professional judgement. Professor Traianou adds, “Teachers who used standardised curricula reported a reduced sense of decision-making and agency… and contrary to assumptions, no difference in workload.” The findings show that both teachers and pupils are losing opportunities for autonomy, collaboration, and meaningful talk—core elements of learning that mindfulness in education seeks to protect. We discuss the political roots of this trend, the dangers of AI-driven curriculum tools, and what mindful, human-centred education might look like instead. 🎧 Listen now to the full podcast and read the article: 👉 If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article. #MindfulLearning #AreYouOnSlide8Yet #FrancisGilbert #Goldsmiths #Teaching #Education #NEU #CreativeEducation #TeacherVoice #MindfulTeaching #Podcast

Simon Stone’s new adaptation of Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea at the Bridge Theatre, starring Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln, is exquisite and psychologically nuanced — yet something vital has ebbed away. In translating Ibsen’s Fruen fra havet into modern English realism, the production trades myth for therapy, danger for empathy. This article explores five lessons the original still teaches us (about desire, freedom, landscape, symbolism, and voice) and what is lost when we tame the sea into a lake.

Two major reports have shaken up the education debate in 2025. The National Education Union’s Are You on Slide 8 Yet? (Traianou, Pearce, Stevenson & Brady, 2025) lays bare the lived realities of teachers trapped in the machinery of standardisation. The government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review: Interim Report (Francis, 2025) goes further than expected, acknowledging deep systemic flaws while hinting at long-overdue reform. These reports land in a time of crisis. Child poverty is rising, teacher pay has stagnated, burnout is escalating, and authoritarian regimes of behaviour management have taken hold in many academies. AI is reshaping classrooms faster than policy can keep up. Together, these forces are eroding teacher autonomy and narrowing the curriculum’s moral and intellectual horizons. This blog identifies five urgent wake-up calls for policymakers. First, the curriculum is failing the children who need it most; inequality is widening. Second, teachers are suffering “death by PowerPoint,” stripped of agency and creativity. Third, workload has not eased; it has intensified under centralised schemes. Fourth, curriculum reform must be guided by dialogue and research, not ideology. And finally, education must equip young people to navigate an uncertain, unequal, AI-driven world. Both reports demand courage and imagination from policymakers. Incremental fixes will not be enough. At Goldsmiths, we are developing models of curriculum design that restore teacher professionalism and creativity, grounded in research-rich, socially just principles. It is time for a new settlement in education, one that trusts teachers, resists authoritarianism, and empowers young people to shape a fairer future. If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article.

Patrick White remains Australia’s only Nobel Prize winner in Literature, yet today his novels are often more admired than read. Fifty years after his Nobel award, critics such as Reuben Mackey (2023) note the curious neglect of a writer who once defined the Australian canon. In this blog I revisit White’s fiction through my own journey with his novels, beginning as a university student wrestling with The Vivisector, and reflect on what they still have to teach us. I focus on four key lessons. First, White’s prose teaches mindfulness: the beauty of fleeting details and the poetry of the present moment. Second, his groundbreaking novel The Twyborn Affair questions rigid gender binaries, anticipating today’s conversations around fluid identity. Third, works like Voss and Riders in the Chariot challenge Eurocentric narratives, offering a decolonising vision of Australian literature. Finally, across his oeuvre White portrays authentic human relationships – complex, flawed, yet profound. This piece blends personal reflection with critical insights, showing how White’s novels remain relevant guides to living thoughtfully, compassionately, and truthfully. Read the full article here: #PatrickWhite #AustralianLiterature #Mindfulness #Decolonising #CreativeWriting #Books

I recorded this episode of the Mindful Learning Podcast with Anthony Cockerill, director of the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), because I believe English teachers have so much to teach us beyond the classroom. Our conversation was a chance to explore what reading, writing, and language mean for all of us as human beings, not just for students in schools. Anthony spoke passionately about the life-changing power of reading for pleasure, the way writing can help us respond to and reflect on life, and the importance of valuing every community’s language. He reminded me that stories shape who we are and that teaching thrives best in community, not in isolation. These are not just classroom lessons — they are life lessons. I wanted to share this podcast because, at a time when education is often framed in narrow, utilitarian terms, we need to remember the broader value of English. Reading, writing, and language are not luxuries; they are ways of being human, of building empathy, resilience, and imagination. Listen to the full conversation and read the blog here: 👉

If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article. In the latest Mindful Learning Podcast I spoke with therapist Bradley Riddell about what therapy is really like. We explored why therapy is never one-size-fits-all, why humour and trust matter, and how clients often already carry the resources they need. As Bradley told me: “Being in the room, you’re already leading the client to a collaborative venture… If you don’t respect the sanctity of the person sitting in the chair with you, you’ve no business being in the therapist’s chair.” Read the blog “7 Things You Should Know About Therapy” for the full write-up, including Bradley’s insights and references to leading thinkers like Janina Fisher, Carl Rogers, and Aaron Beck.

Reflections from my LBC Breakfast Show with Matthew Wright (31 August 2025) This morning I spoke with Matthew Wright on LBC Breakfast about the school attendance crisis. Matthew warned: “Poor school attendance is a red flag for all manner of problems down the road—lower happiness, worse job prospects, even higher chances of encountering the criminal justice system.” I argued that punishment and fines won’t fix the issue. As I said: “These groups feel really shut out of school—it’s too academic for them in many ways. We need to make sure all of our children get a rounded education.” Music, drama, sport, and enrichment are not extras, they’re essentials. They give young people a reason to turn up and thrive. 👉 If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article on francisgilbert.co.uk .

I watched Late Shift (Heldin) at the Alnwick Playhouse and left feeling that everyone in the audience had witnessed life and death together. The film follows Floria, a nurse on the night shift in a Swiss hospital, navigating impossible workloads, patients in pain, angry relatives, and small flashes of compassion. It is both realistic and mythic, a kind of modern Inferno. The film made me reflect on how much we ask of nurses, how dying can be managed well or badly, and how much society needs to decide what we truly want to fund in healthcare. Dignity at 3 a.m. should be a public right, not a private upgrade. Read the full blog on my site: www.francisgilbert.co.uk

Reflections from my appearance on LBC Breakfast Show, 21 August 2025 This morning I joined LBC’s breakfast show (with a stand-in presenter for Nick Ferrari) to talk about GCSE results day, inequality, and what parents can do to help their children succeed. It was a wide-ranging, challenging conversation that touched on poverty, parental support, and the pressures on teachers. In my blog I’ve shared five key things parents should know: from why home support matters more than class, to how daily routines and resilience make a real difference. I wanted to write this piece to distil what we discussed on air, connect it to the research, and offer something useful for parents navigating the anxieties of results day. You can read the full article here: www.francisgilbert.co.uk If you’re reading this on Instagram, please paste the link into your browser to access the full article. #LBC #GCSEResults #Education #ParentalSupport #Inequality #Teaching #FrancisGilbert #MindfulParenting #ParentingTips

Sitting with my 25-year-old son in the Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton, I was transported back to my student days in the 1980s. Watching Barry Lyndon together felt like a full-circle moment. We stayed near Devil’s Dyke, walking its chalk slopes in the evening light, and the film seemed to seep into the landscape around us. I wrote this piece because Kubrick’s film isn’t simply a costume drama, it is a meditation on history, art, and how human life is staged by ritual and chance. Seeing it again reminded me of my tutor at Sussex, John Barrell, whose teaching showed me that people of the 18th century were not “modern” subjects but beings shaped by poverty, class, and tradition. The film captures that difference with extraordinary precision. Revisiting it with my son was moving. He was as mesmerised as I was, proof that cinema can still speak across generations. Writing the blog was my way of reflecting on how light, landscape, and ritual still shape the way we see ourselves.

What does freedom of expression really mean in 2025? On August 5th, I attended a deeply thought-provoking event hosted by Index on Censorship at St John's Church, Waterloo, where my wife Erica Wagner was one of the speakers. The panel launched the new Index issue titled Land of the Free? and gathered journalists, editors, and activists to reflect on Donald Trump’s legacy and the erosion of civil liberties across the US and UK. From SLAPP lawsuits to the criminalisation of protest, the conversation reminded us that freedom is not a given: it must be defended, questioned, and collectively sustained. This blog distils seven key lessons I took away from the night, ranging from the legacy of the War on Terror to the global assault on so-called “woke” values. #FreedomOfExpression #IndexOnCensorship #LandOfTheFree #ProtestRights #SLAPPs #CultureWars #Democracy #WritersLife #PoliticalWriting #CreativeNonfiction #EricaWagner #FrancisGilbert #HumanRights #SpeakUp #UKPolitics #USPolitics

As a teacher, parent, and author of The Mindful English Teacher, I have seen first-hand how much pressure modern education places on families, and how little space there often is for listening, creativity, and emotional understanding. I created this podcast and companion blog to open up a more compassionate conversation between parents and teachers. Speaking with Yundie Fei, a brilliant former student of mine and now an educator working closely with Chinese families, helped me reflect on how deeply similar our experiences are across cultures. We both see the anxiety, the over-scheduling, and the miscommunication; and we both believe things can change. This is for any parent who has ever worried their child is “falling behind,” questioned a teacher’s methods, or wondered how best to support learning at home. I hope it brings reassurance, insight, and perhaps even a sense of relief: you are not alone, and there is a gentler, more mindful way forward.

This summer I descended into the Postojna caves in Slovenia and came back with more than just photos. I wrote a poem and a reflection on what caves can teach us about the surface of our lives: about time, silence, the unconscious, and the power of slowness. From Plato’s shadows to Blake’s infernos, from Freud’s depths to Fingal’s Cave, this blog explores how caves have always shaped our stories and our inner worlds. A piece for anyone drawn to the poetic, the meditative, and the quietly transformative. If you’re reading this on Instagram, the link won’t work here; please paste it into your browser or visit www.francisgilbert.co.uk